The blog of EagleSoft Ltd. Here, at EagleSoft Labs, I post about the development of my various retro homebrew, software, electronics, and indie video game projects, as well as review software, and post other geeky/nerdy stuff.

Universal 3D (U3D) is a newer open-source file format which is (supposed to be, on paper) a more universal, widespread compressed 3D CAD format for the masses to view. This file has many advantages compared to other proprietary CAD formats, including the availability of open-source code to process the files, its compressed size, and its portability. Most importantly, this file format can be embedded into PDF files (called 3DPDF files), allowing portability among a very wide variety of internet browsers, PCs, and devices to view the content. (Although it appears as if the official Adobe Reader X PDF viewer software is one of the few PDF viewers to support 3DPDFs.) Such example usage of 3DPDF files are sharing a read-only CAD drawing to coworkers who may not have the CAD software to view the drawings, or to showcase 3D video game models on a portfolio website.

The main downside to the U3D format? The availability of freeware or cheap software to convert CAD formats to U3D, let alone to convert and to embed into 3DPDFs, is difficult, if not impossible, to find, and most average programmers probably do not have the time, skill, or patience to deal with creating their own solution using the provided open-source code, complex 3D Calculus, and vector math.

Enter FinalMesh

While creating UAHDX over the past Fall 2014 semester, I decided that I needed to find a cheap solution in order to convert my 3D Google Sketchup video game art into 3DPDFs, so that I could showcase and embed them on my portfolio website. (I ended up just converting the CAD art from Ultra Air Hockey instead, since these models can obviously be seen in action in-game). After much searching online, I discovered a very easy method in order to convert most common CAD file formats into a 3DPDF. Using an amazing piece of shareware software called FinalMesh, I was able to create 3DPDF files of my video game CAD Google Sketchup models and convert them into 3DPDFs.

FinalMesh is a Windows shareware application which allows the user to view and to convert various CAD drawing formats into other 3D CAD formats and to raycast/render them to common 2D image formats. (Full list of 2D/3D formats are available here). Most importantly, for the 2D image formats, one can add a title, headers, and text, and can also convert 3D models into 3DPDFs! Below is my how-to for converting Google Sketchup models into 3DPDFs. The steps will vary slightly for converting other file formats. Basically, we will be converting our Google Sketchup .skp file into a Lightwave .obj, loading it into FinalMesh, and converting it to 3dpdf.

What you will need:

1. Google Sketchup (duh, Free prefered)

2. TimeStopper 3.0 (NOT >=4.0!, optional)

3. FinalMesh Trial

4. Tig's ObjExporter Ruby plugin

Steps:

Get your software

If you don't have Google Sketchup/Make download the latest free version from here

It's a software that allows the user to create a special shortcut to run software at an earlier date, used primarly for defeating time-based trials of software. IIRC, FinalMesh has no time-based trial on it, but I performed this step just in case :).

If you do not want to make an account to download the plugin (I personally do not like making online accounts for a one-time thing), you can "borrow" some shared login credentials from Bugmenot for Sketchucation.com

Almost three years after the fact, I have decided to update my old Electronics Suite. During Spring 2013 semester at the university, I had to take (yet again :(, due to credits not transferring) an Electronics course, and used this suite much for digital labs (especially the resistor color decoder program). Originally, this suite was for myself and for others during Spring of 2012, for my first two original Electronics courses at my community college.

While using it, I realized the need to update the suite with a few new features. So I have added actual physical colors for the resistor color decoder program, updated all "About" boxes with the "company" name and the website link, and added a readme to the download

You can download the final version of electronics suite (v1.30 FINAL) at its appropriate page on the website.

About Me

Tamkis is a college graduate with a B.S. degree in software engineering, who is pursuing a career as a software engineer and a video game developer. He owns the website EagleSoft Ltd, where he posts his hobby and professional software and video games he developes, and is passionate about both retro and indie video game development.